Elinor Nauen

Went to a new eye doc today, Johnny's in fact. I refrained from telling Dr. Fang she was in the wrong branch & should've been a dentist. Does she hear that all the time? I need cataract surgery but no rush. But don't drive at night, she warned. That's not too bad & not hard at all, since I almost never drive. Dilated so a little woozy now. 

My post office, 10003, Cooper Square on 4th Ave & 11th Street, used to be the worst P.O. in the city, maybe in the country. Everyone they couldn't fire ended up there & they were so rude & incompetent & stupid. Good luck getting your package that they couldn't be bothered to deliver. The lines were as long in the summer as everywhere else at the holidays. 

Good news! They are nice, helpful, efficient, friendly these days. It's been like that for a while, not because they fear for their jobs. It no longer ruins my week to have to go to the P.O. 

Just one more late-to-the-party hater of the hideously ugly cybertruck. Which is much bigger than I expected - finally saw one in person, parked blocking a hydrant, which is exactly what we expect of these varmints & the varmints who drive them.

The Gray Notebook, Josep Pla (1897-1981), Catalan writer

Yesterday I heard myself say, Why would I ever read anything else? 

A couple of excerpts:

The people of the Ampuerdan are probably the most enthusiastic and elemental in all of Catalonia—provided their enthusiasm doesn't have to last too long. (p 23) 

Today Enric Frigola said that he knows a big fat man with a sensitive soul who feels immediately relieved of all material needs and worries, in a state of grace, whenver he loosens his belt a notch. (p 42) 

Bankers are gentlemen who lend you an umbrella when the sun shines. When it rains, don't count on their help. (p 52)

There are long descriptions of people, places, houses, parties, drinking, studying—everything you can think of. Aphorisms, musings, family lore. It's hard to convey the leisurely but thrilling flavor of the book without reading a lot of it. 

I know, I know, I'm probably setting myself up again for heartbreak. But we've got pigeons, oh my. This time they are roosting on the ground, right outside my office door. So far, a week or so in, they have managed to fend off the rats that I'm sure are sniffing around. This time there are 2 eggs & I'm excited to watch them hatch & grow. But to nest on the ground! Every morning I come in with my fingers crossed that they'll still be there.

I started my new volunteer gig yesterday, as a tutor working with new immigrants with intermediate English skills. It's supposed to be 2 hours of conversation, so they can practice speaking & other skills in a supportive environment. The 3 students last night were from Japan, Colombia, & Russia. We tutors are supposed to talk no more than 20% of the time, but our group leader had brought in vocabulary words & we 3 ended up discussing the nuances & contemporary usages of those words more than the students practiced them. The Russian did try them out in sentences, which I thought was exactly the right way to incorporate them into her vocabulary. I liked everyone & it was super-fun for me to spend a couple of hours talking about words & language. So much fun that I wonder if I'm helpful to them at all. 

No, I haven't taken an interest in ale & I don't know what IPA means in PubWorld. I'm talking about the International Phonetic Alphabet. It's how opera singers, for example, sound like they are fluent when they don't know a word of the language they are singing in. I think it would help with Norwegian pronunciation, beyond the listen-repeat-listen-get a little closer maybe-listen-try again try again-listen-have no idea if I sound anything like what I'm going for. It's daunting: not only the many symbols but matching them to the sounds, learning mechanically to make those sounds. I wonder if there's a class...? Any suggestions, anyone? 

I love Norwegian & I love studying it & languages in general. I wish I knew a lot of 'em but Norwegian (so far) is the only one that I relish learning every nook & cranny of; the others I wish I could open my head & have it poured in. Yesterday, my teacher & I were talking about the nuances between two words & without planning the sentence, I said something that had wordplay in it. Nothing particularly brilliant but I said a complicated technical thought in Norwegian. We looked at each other: did that just happen?!?! A small moment & a huge one. 

People who have studied spoken languages understand this, I'm sure. I had 4 years of Latin, plus shorter stints of Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew, and Old & Middle English. Speaking in, & even more, thinking in, another language is new. Thrilling. My head explodes all the time. 

Very glad to be at the Kenneth Koch celebration last night at the New School, seeing friends & listening to reminiscences. Highlights were Ron Padgett's "Traveling with Kenneth"; a succinct & evocative account of finding the art (in the widest sense) scene in the 1950s by a former Paris Review editor, Maxine Groffsky; Charles North reading 2 uncollected poems; & a sweet short video from Alex Katz, frail but full of fire. His former students revered him & still do. Because the evening was homage, there was no acknowledgement that of the 13 participants, only one was a woman & one was non-white (who had never met Koch & didn't make clear why he'd been asked). An old friend I hadn't seen in ages said he was a great teacher but unsupportive, even nasty, to the women students. He was Of His Times, to be sure. 

The world is not a "prison house," but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell "God" with the wrong blocks.

~ Edward Arlington Robinson

thanks to Aram S. for the quote

I don't have deep insights, just liked this. 

I found this li'l treasure from high school & scanned it to send to Marc when we got back in touch a few years ago. I don't remember anything about doing this magazine or newspaper, & now there's no one on this page but me who would know. Lucy died in 1973, Craig about 15 years ago, & Marc this week. Nancy Cely is not a name I recognize at all. 

Such a good poet & a mensch, with a beautiful wife. He read the other night from his new memoir about his childhood friend, the poet Dick Gallup, & poems from his new book, Pink Dust. A satisfying evening of words. Grab a book or 2 of his & you'll be glad you did. Here's one of my favorite poems of his:

December

I will sleep

in my little cup

I often criticize people who don't travel. I know more than a few people who have been to more countries than states. It's your country! I insist. You should see it. Every state is beautiful & various. 

And yet, how well do I know my own city? Parts of it, sure, but I'm sure there are many neighborhoods I've never been to, if I've even heard of them. Today I went to a funeral at a church on Adam Clayton Powell Jr Blvd & 133rd st. Not an area I'd ever been to, as far as I know. (The funeral was beautiful, with some good singing & a genuine fire-and-brimstone eulogy. "I'm not preaching her eulogy—she lived her eulogy." It was a friend's mother who died, not someone I knew, so I was only human-condition sad.)

I used to have a plan to ride all the subway trains to the end of the line & see what was there. Or get off at a random stop & see what I see. Maybe this spring & summer I'll give it a shot. I've been to 49 states—I'd like to explore 49 NYC communities. 

Update: NYC has 339 separate communities! Some are only a couple of blocks & I've been to quite a few, but my goodness, there's a lot out there!

As one of the chaperones for Sylvie's high school field trip, I just came from seeing a play at the Manhattan Theater Club called Dakar 2000. It kept our attention & had moments of high drama, but ultimately, there was no way to gauge what was a lie & what wasn't, so it ends up feeling like there's not much at stake. The main character had the chance to tell the truth, as the play is framed with a 25-years-later intro & outgo. But he doesn't — or there's no way, no clues, to figure it out. Maybe it was because the room was full of high school students, but the actors couldn't manage to pretend that their attraction was real, so the seduction didn't work. In fact, they couldn't manage to pretend that anything they were saying or doing was real. The New York Times had a similar take. 

But it was super-fun to spend a few hours with my girl. 

Hock mir nisht ken Chinik
Don't hit me with the teapot (don't be a nudnik, don't pester me)

I had never seen this written down. In my head it was something like "hock me a chinik." Used as: "I said no. Don't hock me a chinik anymore!" 

I didn't think I knew any or much Yiddish but here's this great expression that was already there. 

I love language.

Real wealth is never having to spend time with assholes.

~ John Waters

Or as Ezra Pound (maybe) said, It's better to have a lot of time & little money, than a lot of money & little time. I've been quoting this my whole life but never thought to verify the quote. Couldn't find it, although that doesn't mean he didn't say it. Anyway, it's my lifelong mantra 

The thing is, my cat wakes me at 3 a.m. & even when I can go back to sleep, my day is disrupted. By potential going-out time in the evening, all I want is to lie down for the day. This week I've been trying to right my schedule & went to 2 readings, an academic poster presentation by my grandson, lunch with friends, the poets' wingding, dinner with a friend, 5 classes at my gym, & services at my synagogue. I even managed to do 3 things in one day. I used to do that much & more plus work full-ish time, but I love kicking back. It's like when I was 19 & retired. I hung out, got high & had deep conversations, hit the road.... 

Two poems I read yesterday were dissatisfying for opposite yet complementary reasons: one was all language, not anchored to anything real; lovely language but not about anything; no subtext. The other poem described a real event but there was no language, also no subtext. Neither was larger than its limited self. Both of the poets have said at various times that they don't like to get specific; they don't want to name the thing or the time. 

Update: I just found the perfect quote for my response, from James Parker in The Atlantic: A random-feeling extrusion of lyrical matter, like something that might come out of the tube when you pull the lever marked POETRY.

P.s.: He was talking about the very young Robert Frost. 

I like doing one thing a day, with lots of time to lounge around. A little work, a lunch, a reading. I hope it's always like this. Yesterday it was a Greek lunch with my friend from high school & her husband. They live in Idaho but are in New York a lot. Also, they are Greek, which is how she explained wrestling the check away from us: Greeks pay at a Greek restaurant! Today a little wingding with a bunch of poet friends, tomorrow a poetry event at the Graduate Center.

Swirling around everything like a gathering storm is, of course, the political news. That's harder to talk about but everyone I know has been jolted to resist! resist! 

The last read of the second season of Bob Rosenthal & Ed Friedman's series at the Bowery was a terrific wrap-up to what's become a warm community event. Ed gave a fun & varied overview of decades of his work, & Bob & Bob Holman (with Shelley Kraut) performed excerpts of 4 of their plays. Bicentennial Suicide was before I lived in NYC & I'd never seen it. I was in Clear the Range in 1979(?) & sang along last night with "Cole Younger." I remember everyone except me in Clear the Range had acted professionally & they were all good. I don't know why I was in poets' plays. In general, people cast me because I wasn't shy I would be a good actor but I wasn't. That or because I would take off my clothes. 

Once in a while it's lovely to lie around for half a day, my hand on Johnny's smooth chest while we read & chuckle & share what made us laugh. I love that man.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

~ Thomas Edison

On the other hand, many of life's successes are people who realized that failing was just as pleasurable as succeeding, & mediocrity was plenty good enough. Who didn't beat their heads against a wall & still couldn't pull off whatever grand plan they had in mind. Success can be being OK with what you've got not striving after more. 

On buy nothing day (Friday), I shopped as local as it's possible to do, buying a loaf of Irish soda bread from Mary O, who expanded from selling a few loaves from her bar on Ave A, to a bigger operation in a storefront on 7th Street. It comes hot from the oven with Irish butter and Mary's homemade blackberry jam. Our nephew scored a scone or 2 when he was in town last year & it brought back his Nana (Johnny's mother) to his great pleasure. When Johnny brought home a loaf from the bar, a couple years ago it must have been, I told him to stop by every day & beg her to bake more. Too expensive, he said. I think a loaf then was either $9 or $12, which did seem ridiculous. Now she charges $30 (+ tax) & there's a line out the door till they sell out & shut down for the day. 

How did I used to work dozens of hours a week AND do a million other things? Now, if I have two hours of editing work, I'm done in for the day & surrounding day. I feel like I do a lot: classes at the gym, readings, long phone visits, writing, reading but not compared to when I was 30. Somehow time has fewer hours now that most of the hours are my own. 

One of my favorite poets turns 100 today. The Kenneth Koch Literary Estate and the New School are celebrating his life and work on Monday, March 17, 7-9, at the New School Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street. 

Koch, who taught at The New School from 1958 to 1966, was a poet, teacher, playwright, fiction writer, collaborator with artists, and a major poet of New York. Participants include Jim Jarmusch, Lucy Sante, Jim Dine, Alex Katz, Ron Padgett, Charles North, Tony Towle, and more. 

A great night! Put it on your calendar! 

If I summarized the last 10 years of Johnny's health, you would gasp & ask how he could possibly be still alive. If I summarized the last 3-4 years of events in my emotional life, you would wonder how it is I'm not on heavy psych drugs. It's not worse for me than lots of others, of course, & there's been lots of fantastic stuff, etc etc, but even though I can't help running a list of my troubles, I suddenly feel fine. I don't know how it works that sooner or later I can shake off my sorrows & feel like my real (optimistic) self but it happened this week. Am I like those weighted dolls that you can bat around but ends upright? It's said that no matter what happens we end up in our normal state. The hopers gonna hope, the curmudgeons gonna curmudge. I'm happy that my natural state is happy. 

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.
~ Adlai Stevenson

And where you don't have to try to figure out how & when to be brave. 

My wonderful gym has classes aimed at older people. I usually take several a week. I thought I would try "Life Barre Fusion," my first Sunday class. It was hard! Turns out I hadn't noticed it wasn't an Arora (old folks) class. I did notice a lot of young people in the class, but assumed they were allowed to take our classes. I looked at my watch & we were only 20 minutes in: could I survive another 25 minutes? But I'd forgotten what time the class started & we were actually almost to the end. I'm glad I went, although I would never have gone knowingly, & if I can walk tomorrow, I'll consider taking it again. 

I'm full of useful info this week. The Resistance Reader is a great source of practical, strategic articles on many topics. It addresses my question of how to proceed, bravely. 

I've done the training & will soon start volunteering in a program that helps new immigrants improve their English language skills by means of conversation. I think it will be fun & right now feels like something useful without being fraught. "English in Action" is part of the English-Speaking Union, a huhdred-year-old organization that also sponsors speakers and a Shakespeare contest, among other activities.